Wednesday, August 27, 2014

12:47 PM

The latest Marquette University Law School poll again found Gov. Scott Walker and Dem rival Mary Burke locked in a tight race.

The poll, conducted Thursday through Sunday, found 47.5 percent of registered voters backed Walker, while 44.1 percent favored Burke. Among likely voters, it was 48.6 percent for Burke and 46.5 percent for Walker.

Poll director Charles Franklin said the differences were well within the margin of error, and the changes over the last two polls statistically insignificant.

The poll also asked about the race for the open attorney general's office. It found both Dem candidate Susan Happ and Republican Brad Schimel were largely still unknown to the electorate. In the head-to-head match up, their party affiliations were added in when the question was posed to respondents.

That found 40 percent of registered voters favored Happ, who won the Dem primary a little more than a week before the poll went into the field. Thirty-three percent backed Schimel, while 24 percent were undecided or didn't know.

The survey interviewed 815 registered voters both through land lines and cell phones. That sample size had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. The poll included 609 likely voters, and that margin of error was plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.

The partisan breakdown of registered voters included 27 percent Republicans, 31 percent Dems and 38 percent registered voters. That's in line with the average of the 23 statewide polls Marquette has conducted.